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I do not believe in loving enemies I have pretty hard work to love my friends. Neither do I believe in revenge. No man can afford to keep the viper of revenge in his heart. But I believe in justice, in self-defense.

Robert Green Ingersoll

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Robert Green Ingersoll
Age: 65 †
Born: 1833
Born: August 11
Died: 1899
Died: July 21
Essayist
Lawyer
Lecturer
Orator
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Dresden
Yates County
New York
Robert Ingersoll
The Great Agnostic
Love
Friends
Revenge
Keep
Enemies
Self
Defense
Hard
Loving
Heart
Neither
Work
Pretty
Viper
Believe
Enemy
Vipers
Men
Justice
Afford

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I read the other day an account of a meeting between John Knox and John Calvin. Imagine a dialogue between a pestilence and a famine!
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Arguments cannot be answered with insults. . . . Kindness is strength. . . . Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I am anxious to give away information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other people.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Whoever saw an angel barefooted?
Robert Green Ingersoll
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In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Fear paints pictures of ghosts and hangs them in the gallery of ignorance.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Grant others the same rights as you claim for yourself.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Music expresses feeling and thought, without language it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The myth of hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts... I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Now the struggle for life is so sharp, competition is so severe, that few men can succeed who carry a useless burden. The businessmen of our country are compelled to lead temperate lives, otherwise their credit is gone.
Robert Green Ingersoll